


You only know the important things

by fineandwittie



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: FIx It, M/M, Post phone call, angsty with a happy ending, bookverse, i mixed them as usual, movieverse, they are distressingly in love with each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 05:17:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13652199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: Oliver sees Elio everywhere, is haunted by his memory, until the day that memory walks out of the music building at Colombia and becomes very real.





	You only know the important things

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, unbeta'd.
> 
> I've been toying with this for a bit. I like the idea of Elio going to school in NYC and running into Oliver

The beginning of September always brought with it thoughts of Elio. He’d be in his second year of college this year. I wondered what he looked like now, if he’d changed, grown a beard, or if he was still the smooth skinned beauty he’d been that summer.

Not that thoughts of Elio were often far from me. I would see a mop of dark curls in a crowd or catch of a whiff of Italian cigarettes and think of him. I’d think of him at book releases or bars, at ice cream parlors or whenever I heard someone speak Italian or German or French. 

His specter haunted me and every near miss hurt as badly as those first few months back in the States had. As badly as the phone call I made, telling him I was getting married. 

Which was why, when I actually did catch sight of Elio Perlman emerging from the Center for Enthomusicology at Columbia, I nearly dismissed it as just another memory. I blinked and there he still was, those fly away curls longer, face still bare. 

“Elio!” My own voice startled me. I had not planned to yell after him. I had not consciously thought of moving at all, but I was pushing through the crowd suddenly, desperate to get to him.

He turned at the sound of his name and saw me. I can’t say his blank stare was what I’d expected because I did not expect anything, but it was certainly not what I wanted from him. A smile, at least. A grin? Some sign that I had not been forgotten. That our past, our summer, was not something now distasteful to him.

“Oliver. Or do I call you Dr. Arenson now?” He asked with that curl of his mouth that I’d always dreaded, wanted, feared.

It was like a blow to the sternum. His tone was ironic, almost cruel. I blinked at him, totally unable to reconcile him with my memory of him. He was no taller, but he had thickened some over the three years since I’d seen him last. He was no less beautiful. I couldn’t breath, couldn’t think, couldn’t stand that he was just staring at me, eyes like ice. 

“God, Elio.” Was what I finally managed to choke out. His jaw tightened. “What are you doing here?”

He frowned. I wanted to wrap him in my arms. I wanted to kiss the space between his eyebrows and will the frown away. I wanted to drop to my knees and blow him right there in the middle of the sidewalk.

“You correspond with my father frequently. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

I felt wrong footed, like the ground beneath me was shifting and I couldn’t find an anchor. His rudeness, his hostility, seemed so out of step with my own emotional response to him that I couldn’t quite process it. We’d been so in sync the last time I’d seen him and now…

“Of course, I write to your father, but what does that…oh. No, Elio, I told him years ago not to tell me about you unless something serious happened. I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear it. I spent, spend, enough time imaging what your life is like now. I don’t need concrete details to dwell on too.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you lying to me?”

His words fell on me like a shower of rocks, ruinous and bloody. “I’ve never lied to you. Elio, why…how could you ask me…” I looked away, unable to finish the sentence through the tightening of my throat. The old scars of loving him ripped open and I was bleeding onto the pavement at his feet. 

How could he be so cruel? What had I done to him to deserve this frigidity? Had I really taken that much from him?

“My father never…told…you…” His voice was fading, the malice slipping away from it. He was staring at me now, eyes wide and liquid as the waters at the Berm. His lips were parted and I longed to slip my tongue between them and taste him.

I shook the impulse away. “Pro never told me anything.”

“Oliver, I live in New York now.”

I couldn’t have heard him correctly.

“I’ve been living in New York for months. I’m enrolled at Columbia.”

I did hear him correctly. The entire world came crashing down around me. I couldn’t hear whatever else he said through the buzzing in my ears, the feel of blood rushing through my veins. My body felt far away from me. I couldn’t have this conversation in the middle of the street where one of my students might see.

“Will you come home with me? I can’t…We can’t do this here. I…I need—“

He nodded, cut off my disjointed ramble, and gestured for me to lead the way.

I couldn’t tell you how we made it back to my apartment. I don’t remember it. I was standing in the street staring at Elio and then I was in my living room. I could hear someone moving in the kitchen.

I collapsed on the couch, unable to stay standing any longer. Elio was living in New York. 

Elio himself was standing inside the doorway, looking uneasy. His gaze kept flicking toward the kitchen. 

I opened my mouth to say…something, anything to break this dream that had settled around us, but before I managed so much as a syllable, Liz stepped out of the kitchen.

Elio’s face went blank again.

 _He’s much better at hiding his emotions now,_ I thought, and the very idea lanced through me. Was that my fault? 

Liz had been holding a glass of water in her left hand when she’d walked through the doorway, but when she saw Elio in our apartment, her hand released. The glass shattered against the floor and the sound of it jolted me back to myself. 

“Oh my god, Elio!” She was breathless and a smile broke over her face. “Oliver! You never told me that you’d finally invited Elio to visit. It’s about damn time, you coward.”

I swallowed and offered her a pained smile. “I’m still a coward, Liz. I ran into him coming out of Dodge.”

She stepped over the glass and water and crossed the room to pull Elio into a hug. My chest ached with jealousy. He seemed so hostile that I didn’t dare do the same, no matter how much I wanted to. 

Even at my lowest point I had never hated nor resented Elizabeth, until now. As I watched her wrap her arms around him and pull him into her body, I hated her. There was no part of me, no hidden corner of my soul, that didn’t yearn to do the same. Just a hug. Friends embraced after long absences, right? I’d settle for a hug.

He seemed stunned, like he’d been expecting a blow and didn’t understand how there were arms wrapped around him instead. When Elizabeth stepped back, he blinked down at her. “You’re Oliver’s wife, then?”

She frowned. “Wife? No. Oliver’s single. Has been since we broke up three years ago. We never went through with it. I was never going to be able to compete with you for Oliver’s heart, even if he never saw you again. I knew better than to try.”

Elio’s breath stuttered to a halt and his eyes snapped to me. I stared back, letting him see whatever it was he wanted to know. I would let him see everything, have everything of me. Whatever he wanted. Nothing had changed from that night, the one Before Midnight, when I’d lain awake waiting to hear him come in and hating myself and Marzia, hating that I loved him so much, hating that I’d take whatever he was willing to give me.

The only difference between then and now is that now I know what his cock feels like buried to his balls inside me, what his ass feels like grinding down on me, what he tastes like, smells like, sounds like. The only difference is I gave up hating myself a long time ago.

I felt raw, like someone had flayed the skin from my bones and rubbed me all over in salt. All it would take for Elio to shatter me like Liz’s glass would be a look, a single word, or nothing at all. His silence would do just the same.

“Elio.” He said, still staring at me. 

And made me anew. I was whole again. A soul reunited with itself. I could breath. “Oliver.”

Elizabeth must have thought we were insane, but I no longer cared. I hardly even recognized that she was there anymore. The uncontrollable surge of jealous hatred had vanished as fast as it had come.

I met him halfway. We slammed into one another, a tangle of limbs and grasping hands. I was crying. But then, so was he.

Some time later, I occurred to me that Elizabeth had left, locking the door on her way out. Which was fortunate because Elio and I, by that point, were a sweaty, naked mess on the living room floor. I had rug burn on my ass and shoulders. He had it on his knees. 

I lay there, cradling him against my chest, and relished the burn in my muscles. I would feel this tomorrow. I wanted to feel it every day for the rest of my life. I wanted Elio every day for the rest of my life.

“You said you moved to New York a few months ago. Did you transfer in from overseas?”

Elio blinked up at me and shook his head. “You really don’t know that much about me, do you? Only the important things. I’m doing PhD work in Musicology and in Art History. I picked Columbia because they agreed to allowed me to do both programs simultaneously.”

I breathed for a moment, taking this in. “Which means you were already in college when I stayed with you? And you called Vimini a genius. You really do know everything.”

He laughed, high and delighted and exactly as I remembered it. “No. Although, I guess now I know a little more about the things that matter most.”

“Why didn’t you contact me? You’ve been at Columbia for months.” The sound of my own voice made me cringe, how vulnerable it sounded, how wounded.

I wanted forever with him, but I never asked him if he wanted the same. He’d clearly thought I was married. Maybe he just didn’t want the burden of seeing me and having to deny himself this. We still never said those words. Maybe he never loved me at all. Maybe it had all been a dream my mind had conjured to—

“I thought you were married. You never called me again after that time at Hanukkah. What was I supposed to do? Barge back into your life, demanding your time? For all I knew, you had children by now.”

I shook my head as he spoke. “Yes. That’s exactly what you should have done. Even if I was married and did have kids, that’s exactly what you should have done. Elio, god, I love you. Don’t you know I love you? I always have. Liz saw that snapshot of us at the beach and called off the wedding. Even she could see how much I loved you.”

He shocked his head, burying his face against my neck. “No. I couldn’t have born that. I would have broken into a million pieces and never ever been whole again. To see you happily married to someone else, with children. A whole life that had nothing to do with me? I couldn’t. I could barely stand the idea that you have a life back here in the States while you stayed with us, never mind being forced to confront that life and know how far from me you really were.”

I carded my hand through his curls and considered this. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here now. Could we…start again? Would you be willing to try for something more…real. More permanent? You’re not seeing someone, are you?”

It occurred to me then that we hadn’t used a condom. 

“No. I’m not. And I’m clean, if that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t have it. I haven’t…I haven’t been with a man since you. God, Oliver. I couldn’t bring myself to even try. There’s really only you, for me. I went out with women, a little, because it was easier to forget that way. Something so different from you.”

“That wasn’t what I was worried about, but thank you.” I paused. Shame pricked at me. I hadn’t been with anyone at all since him. I haven’t even slept with Elizabeth after I got back. I couldn’t stomach it. “I’m clean as well.”

“Elizabeth said you’re single. That you’ve been single since…”

I stared up at the ceiling. “Yes. I haven’t…I haven’t been with anyone at all, since you.”

He made a soft, punched out noise and pulled away from. The shame crawled up my throat, choking me. That was too revealing. I’d given away too much and he was going to leave. 

“You…” He was leaning up on one arm, staring down at me with wide eyes. “God. Oliver.” I looked away, not able to meet that gaze. “Hey,” he murmured, reaching up to tug my face gently back. “Hey, don’t do that. I love you too. I always have. I…I’d spent the rest of forever proving that to you if you’d let me. So…let me?”

Elio had always been braver than me. On the Berm with his hand on my crotch, at the villa with a note under my door, or at the train station with a shattered smile and dry eyes.

I couldn’t stop the tears that leaked out of the corners of my eyes and ran down into my hair. I stared up at him, ignoring them. “Let you? Elio, I’d let you do or have anything you wanted. You want to love me? God please. You want my soul? Take it. It’s been yours since that day on the Berm. Whatever you want. Take it all.”

He watched me for a moment, something reverent and kind in his eyes, before leaning down and kissing me. He kissed like a beggar at a feast, demanding and yearning and with his whole body.

Now that I had him, now that we’d found our way back to one another, I was never letting him go.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are gold and prompts are requested. :D


End file.
